![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lapost.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/20200525-total-high-speed-railway-mileage.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nPassengers take bullet trains at Nanchang Railway Station, east China\u2019s Jiangxi province, April 30. Photo by Hu Guolin, People\u2019s Daily Online<\/em><\/p>\n Qu Chuncai, a woman living in Fangcheng county, Nanyang of central China\u2019s Henan province is taking a selfie in front of a newly-built high-speed railway station in the county, holding her three-year-old child with one arm.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the first time for her to visit the train station. \u201cI came here since the project commenced, just to share the construction progress with my husband,\u201d the woman said, who can\u2019t hide her joy when speaking of the grand facility in her hometown.<\/p>\n Qu\u2019s husband Song Hongquan is a businessman working in Wuhan, central China\u2019s Hubei province. He earns much from his inkstone business, but to go home was always a tough journey.<\/p>\n Qu told People\u2019s Daily that her husband had to take a 6-hour train from Wuhan to Nanyang, and then spend about a quarter walking to Nanyang\u2019s bus station. Another two hours at least were needed before he finally took a bus home in Fangcheng county.<\/p>\n Thanks to the opening of the Zhengzhou-Xiangyang section on the Zhengzhou-Chongqing high-speed railway last December, the time needed to travel from Fangcheng to Wuhan was reduced to 3 hours from 8. \u201cHe can now enjoy Wuhan hot-dry noodles for breakfast in Wuhan and then come home for a bowl of stewed noodle (a specialty of Henan province) at noon,\u201d Qu said.<\/p>\n China\u2019s high-speed rail construction is benefiting millions of people. Transport Minister Li Xiaopeng introduced on a May 19 press conference held by the State Council Information Office that a total of 3.2451 trillion yuan of fixed assets investment was made in the transport sector last year, with world-class projects such as the Beijing Daxing International Airport and Beijing-Zhangjiakou high-speed railway starting operation. According to Li, China\u2019s railway network spans over 139,000 kilometers, including 35,000 kilometers of high-speed rail.<\/p>\n The total mileage of China\u2019s railway network is expected to hit 146,000 kilometers by the end of this year, reaching 99 percent of the cities with a population of no less than 200,000. The high-speed rail mileage will reach 39,000 kilometers, and China will still remain the world\u2019s largest operator of high-speed railway.<\/p>\n High-speed rails are changing people\u2019s lives, turning their expectations into reality.<\/p>\n \u201cThe high-speed railway is just making it so convenient,\u201d said Xu Li, who always commutes between Beijing and Hohhot, capital of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to see doctors. The man can now go to Beijing in the morning after making online appointments and return to Hohhot on the same day. The Beijing-Zhangjiakou and Zhangjiakou-Hohhot high-speed railways have reduced the travel time between Hohhot and Beijing to 2 hours and 18 minutes from the previous 9 hours.<\/p>\n Yimeng, a mountainous area in east China\u2019s Shandong province, is known for its local specialties and fertile environment. A planned cargo high-speed rail express is now turning the poor transportation in the region a thing in the past.<\/p>\n Niu Qinghua, who runs e-commerce agricultural business in Yimeng, said that the high-speed cargo service, if used to transport peaches in Yimeng, will not only lower the cost, but also present better taste of the fruits, as the peaches can be picked when they are completely mature.<\/p>\n Xingguo county in east China\u2019s Jiangxi province was one of the impoverished regions connected to the high-speed rail network last year.<\/p>\n \u201cNot many people ran factories in my hometown as the transportation was poor, but now I must expand my factory because of the high-speed rail,\u201d said Liu Yanming, head of a garment factory in the county which employs 60 workers. Besides, 11 impoverished people now work at the factory\u2019s poverty-alleviation workshop.<\/p>\n \u201cI had three business trips per month at most before as it took at least a day to go to Shanghai and Guangzhou. When the Nanchang-Ganzhou high-speed railway opens, it will only take a couple of hours to get to Guangzhou, so I\u2019ll go whenever I want,\u201d Liu noted, adding that more business trips will surely make his business better, and thus helping his fellow villagers pursue a better-off life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Lu Ya\u2019nan, Cheng Shijie, People\u2019s...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25253,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25251\/revisions\/25253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}